


brightest

by Anonymous



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:37:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15819030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Kageyama Tobio is fourteen years old and he thinks he's scared of silver.





	brightest

He’s seen better colors than this.

 

There’s a very long, vague list of things he’s seen, to be honest; volleyball is only one of the first of many, and he knows that untrue to its actual appearance its color is a quick flash of a serve or a spike, the sound familiar to his ears by now, a well-worn tune. It’s not the only one he sees, either. There’s the taste of milk, scrape of wind across his cheeks on a morning run; chalk brushing across blackboards; the sound of shoes squeaking on wooden floors and a million more he can barely name. After that, there’s an even longer list of the colors he knows enough to remember.

 

It might be something weird or unnatural. It might make people raise their eyebrows, or shy away like it’s some sort of contagious disease, but the thing is — the thing is, this is the only way he knows things. He lives with colors in his head and he never tries to push them out.

 

Things change, probably.

 

Kageyama Tobio is fourteen years old and he thinks he’s scared of silver.  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s not like the fear is something palpable. He doesn’t look at steel or mirrors or coins and get the urge to run. He doesn’t know colors like everyone else does, anyway, so it doesn’t matter to him, at least not in a material case.

 

It’s more like the things he _knows_ that scare him — how the sound of a ball hitting the floor when it should’ve been hit by a palm is the worst kind of sound in the world, and how sometimes he still wakes up drenched in cold sweat and has to force himself not to remember. He knows these things like a hole in the head and it’s not really easy. Rejection already stings, but rejection from the entire team when you’re supposed to be the heart of the game stings ten thousand times worse, and maybe it’s tainted silver for him, because now when he sees it he wishes he could live without it like normal people.

 

He’s not scared of it like a child is scared of the dark. He’s scared of it because he doesn’t ever want to see it again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Volleyball is silver. This is something he learns at an early age. The whoosh of a jump serve is a streak, a comet; a receive is something darker and steadier; the sound of a spike is just about in the middle, depending on the power behind it. The silver is a constant thing, because it’s not like he can just stop himself from seeing it. Volleyball is a part of his life so silver is a part of his life. That’s how his colors are.

 

But back then, he thinks, had felt like the first time. Not because it was any different — but because the silver had been _everywhere_ , in between the spaces of his teammates’ silence, swelling through the cracks, breathing with him something toxic and terrible and he didn’t know how to make it stop because it’s always been there, just not _this much_ , so much he feels like he’s drowning in it.

 

So the color is tainted for him. He still plays, because it’s the only thing he’s ever known. To hate something you’ve once loved is incredibly scary and painful, so he chooses not to do it, instead operates on muscle-memory and plays volleyball like habit and once in a while he wonders if he’s chosen the better option or the worse.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He doesn’t _hate_ silver from then on because it’s impossible, but he does fear it a little, has to swallow it down so it doesn’t choke him with visions of turned backs and tall walls.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(One thing he does learn to hate: the sound of _king_ falling from someone’s lips. It’s not even silver, it’s dark gray, but it’s something more palpable he can be afraid of so maybe he allows himself to be a coward and it comforts him, a little.

 

A little. Not a lot. Just a little.)

  
  
  
  
  
  


When he turns fifteen, he tries to see it again.

 

Karasuno manages to feel like a dream: the silver’s not as sharp as it was before, so he can breathe a little easier. Less of a dream and more of a recurring nightmare is the orange-haired boy Kageyama remembers from a match that feels like a decade ago. Hinata brings with him something fierce, sharpened by will and ambition in the set of his limbs, and Kageyama can think back to a meeting in a bathroom and a promise on a stairway and know why. He’s a fire with too much energy, a force that meets Kageyama halfway, and it confuses him, sort of, because he’s never had someone that can yell _I’m here_ and mean it and he’s never even _had_ someone point blank.

 

Hinata confuses him because he doesn’t know what to feel.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


( _It doesn’t matter_ , he’d said, but Kageyama had thought it _always_ mattered, so to have a spiker like a whirlwind who can hit his quick set better than anyone ever had messes him up, to say the least.)

  
  
  
  
  
  


He likes his teammates. He thinks he does, anyways. Daichi-san is a good, solid captain, Suga-san treats them to food after practices and smiles more often than he doesn’t and even Tanaka-san can heighten the energy of a game in a millisecond. Noya-san is the same, and Asahi-san — when he returns — transforms on the court into Karasuno’s backbone and puts an undeniable sparkle in Hinata’s eyes. Yamaguchi and Tsukishima are sort of strange, at first, but Kageyama learns about Yamaguchi’s gentle nature with time, and can only conclude that having Tsukishima as a childhood friend must have warped him in some way. Tsukishima he bears. He’s not a terrible hitter and definitely not a terrible blocker so Kageyama thinks he can deal, probably.

 

Then there’s Hinata, who’s still a question mark. It’s stupid, because _Hinata’s_ stupid, and Kageyama can barely stand him at times ( _“dumbass, Hinata, dumbass!”_ ) but other times (like when he hits Kageyama’s toss) Hinata steals the air right out of his lungs. He blames it on volleyball; on how he’s never had someone to hit his toss before, and Hinata’s never had someone to toss _for_ him before, so that’s the reason why their weird chemistry on the court feels more like a flash-fire. That’s why Kageyama can’t think of anything but him when they’re executing a play. That must be why (the _only reason_ why), when Hinata looks at him first after he hits a good spike with luminescent eyes, Kageyama feels like he’s burning alive.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Their quick set when they’ve perfected it is closer to white than silver. The sound of one of Daichi’s receives is a dark-iron shade. Suga’s tosses are the lightest platinum he’s ever seen. Hinata’s spike is usually a bit bronze-tinted, but when it’s with Kageyama, it shines more. Hinata’s receives are off but they’re still clear and bright. Hinata’s footsteps are brown. Hinata’s voice is something he grows to learn because the first time he’d seen it it was startling, a myriad of yellow and red and orange like a sunset, and Kageyama doesn’t _see_ sunsets, so when something like those colors blend he’s even more confused and frustrated with himself.

 

His own voice is duller; something like navy-blue.

 

When Hinata smiles at him he thinks he might see pink, but Kageyama’s probably just imagining it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Kageyama?”

 

They’re sitting off to the side and watching an impromptu game with the seniors: Tanaka-san slams down a spike (steel) and howls. Hinata’s not looking at him. When Kageyama slides his eyes to the side, he catches the bob of a throat as it swallows water and hurriedly snaps his gaze forward again.

 

“Yeah,” he says.

 

Hinata’s voice sounds like he’s debating something, and stupidly enough, Kageyama still sees sunlight.

 

“Do, um...do people still call you King?”

 

He blinks. Hinata seems to take it as a bad sign and drops his water bottle in his haste, raising his hands up in a placating gesture. “I’m – I’m just asking! Because it’s been a while, you know! Geez, don’t look at me like that, why is your face always so scary--”

 

“I was born with this face,” he mutters, even though Hinata never seems to remember this, and cuts off his resulting blabbering with a short, “yeah.”

 

It’s not like he thought anything different. It’s not like Kageyama expected it to stop right after he learned to work with Karasuno, anyways – sometimes there are too many things to forget. Once in a while, at a practice match or while watching a game, people’s whispers still follow him around, and he’s learned that the best thing to do is just to ignore it. The word is still gray and still drops like a bruise on his skin but Kageyama’s learned to accept it; he knows he deserved it, and he knows he probably still deserves it now, even if he’s changed with his team and even if Hinata never misses any of his tosses anymore, so he blocks out the words and blocks out Tsukishima’s taunts and tries to push the gray away.

 

But Hinata takes this answer like a funeral pledge. “Oh,” he says quietly. He picks up his water bottle and doesn’t meet Kageyama’s eyes.

 

His voice is a little darker, a little more sombre. The sunset fades out to dusk.

 

Kageyama hates it for a reason he can’t explain.

 

“It doesn’t bother me as much anymore,” he says, and starts when he realizes he’s telling the truth. It’s true, that it doesn’t get to him like it used to; doesn’t strike him as deep. _King_ is a word he’ll never learn to like and a color like a storm, but he says this to Hinata and he knows:

 

He can do better, now.

 

“Oh!” Hinata says. It’s much lighter this time. He fumbles with his water bottle again, then looks up at Kageyama and says, “I’m glad! That’s....good. It’s really good.”

 

 _A smile isn’t a sound_ , Kageyama thinks.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


There’s the whole mess with the Inter-High (Oikawa-san’s serves still sound like a hurricane) and their loss hits him more than he’d expect, and there’s late nights studying at his desk for the exams, and being stuck with Tsukishima after practices trying to memorize math equations, and the hurry through remedial lessons to ride a death-train to Tokyo — and then there’s Tokyo itself and an even _bigger_ mess because one side wants change and one doesn’t and Hinata’s voice sounds like nothing but dull auburn for a week and Kageyama almost starts to hate silver again.

 

They fix it, in the end. This might be a bigger obstacle than they’re used to, but they manage to hurdle it, and when Hinata starts sounding like sunset and smiling like summer-sky once more Kageyama has to wonder why he even doubted them in the first place.

 

It’s change, and it’s a welcome one.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(Something less welcome: Kageyama’s heart starts making itself known. He catches these dumb flutters in his chest when they play together again, and they don’t go away, and he starts looking at the sunset on the ride back to Miyagi and thinking about more.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He makes it through another month of practices and matches and games — another month of his wildfire rhythm with Hinata — before he sits bolt upright in his bed at night, replays their latest quick in his head again, and realizes that the silver has begun to change.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s not too obvious. It’s hard to change something so present in his life so suddenly, after all. But when he tosses a volleyball, now he feels it like trailing fire across the court, and when Hinata hits it everything explodes in his chest like a starburst or a supernova. It’s not silver anymore; it’s something much louder than that, much brighter.

 

 _Hinata’s_ much brighter than that.

 

And _well_ , he thinks, when he wakes up from a dream that had left him a little confused and more than a little breathless, his blood pounding a dizzying beat in his head, he’d probably been stupid not to see this coming, anyway.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Kageyama doesn’t usually want to slap himself after speaking a sentence.

 

Needless to say, this is an exception.

 

“Um,” Hinata says. “So... you can... see colors?”

 

He swallows. They’re sitting in the shade of a tree with its foliage already rust-red and falling, autumn clear in the way the leaves gather and crinkle at their feet. It’s a bit strange; their teammates are still with them, on an after-practice trip to Ukai-san’s convenience store, but he suddenly feels like they all drop off the earth and there’s only Hinata, Hinata, Hinata, staring at him like he’s something gilded, the warm colors painting a perfect backdrop behind even warmer skin.

 

 _Sunset_ , Kageyama thinks, then blurts: “I hear them.”

 

“Oh,” is all Hinata says in response. Their teammate’s chatter fades in, out. He peers at Kageyama with curious eyes.

 

“How?”

 

Kageyama still wants to hit himself for initiating this conversation, but he takes a deep breath; tries to calm down a little. He’s never talked to anyone much about his colors, so maybe it’s time to learn how to. “It’s like...they come with the sound. Like lightning flashes.”

 

“Oh,” Hinata says again, then: “that’s so _cool_.”

 

“Not really,” he mutters.

 

“No, seriously! It’s like your personal rainbow, or something.” Hinata taps his chin. “Isn’t it weird, though? Like they’re not really supposed to be there?”

 

“No.”

 

Kageyama hates how fast his reply is. He hates it even more when Hinata’s lips part, like he’s just been given something wonderful.

 

He hates this the most, because he hadn’t even thought about silver, only of reds and yellows and mute-orange skies, and the answer was as easy as coming home.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“What about...traffic?”

 

“It’s a lot at the same time. Like... blurred neon flashes.”

 

“Car honks?”

 

“Red.”

 

“Hmmm... the school bell?”

 

“Light blue. Look, Hinata, there’s too many to explain—”

 

“What about me?”

 

“—huh?”

 

“My voice! What color is it?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_Orange_ , he thinks. _Red, yellow. Warm bronze. Nothing dark or cold or stifling, nothing to be afraid of. Nothing like silver. Everything like sun, like heat, like flash-fire stares, everything to burn on the court—_

 

He stops there. He sees a color.

 

 _Oh,_ he thinks.

 

_That’s what._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“...Kageyama?”

 

“It — it doesn’t work like that, dumbass Hinata! _Dumbass_!”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(The sunset changes a little, too.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


A day later: “...what about volleyball, then?”

 

“What?”

 

“Your colors. What color is it?”

 

He breathes. “Silver.”

 

“Oh, that’s a really pretty color.”

 

“...Yeah.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(There’s probably his own type of silver, now.)

 

(He’s not scared anymore. He can toss in a way that everyone can hit and adjust them to all his teammates. He can speak the word “friend” without stuttering. He can play volleyball without thinking about drowning in silver and he can stand on the court and not feel the weight of worlds pressing into his back, a long-gone guilt. He can listen to a faded whisper of “king”, and he can remember, but he won’t go back no matter what it takes. He can’t quite fly yet — they’re not perfect like that, they’re still fifteen, still boys, and they have more than enough room to grow — but he can sort of make Hinata fly, and everyone else just pales in contrast to Hinata’s fire, and when he thinks about it, he knows that it is, has always been more than enough.)

 

(He’s not scared anymore, and now he finds himself wondering if he ever really was.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It turns out Hinata kind of thinks like him, too.

 

He stutters his way through his confession and when he finishes his cheeks are a rose-pink that has nothing to do with the December cold. He stares resolutely at the ground, refusing to meet Kageyama’s eyes. Overhead, the sun hangs, lazy, spilling over the bumps and ridges of the country, and there’s still green and brown peeking through the melting snow because it’s not quite winter yet, more like somewhere in-between — Hinata’s hair is still the brightest thing in miles, though, and Kageyama secretly thanks whatever volleyball god out there is watching over them before striding over in three large steps.

 

“Uh,” Hinata gets out weakly. He’s still not looking at Kageyama. The pink is spreading, across his face and to the tips of his ears. “I — I mean —”  

 

“Shut up,” Kageyama says gruffly, and kisses him.

 

There’s a surprised sound that gradually melts into a sigh. They have to bend, shift for a better position. The snow crunches beneath their feet, and they’re both smiling, eventually, and overall it’s a little bit messy and a little bit wet and a little bit hurried and rushed for all their waiting, but it’s also a lot perfect, Kageyama thinks.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Hinata tastes like gold.

**Author's Note:**

> hhHHh i don't rly know what this is tbh!! i was just cleaning up my old files and found this written like 2 years ago that i'd totally forgotten about aaaand thought it'd be a bit of a waste not to post (even though i've pretty much strayed from hq fandom a long time ago sigh) so... here it is... in all its completely unedited, probably terribly rushed glory
> 
> if you haven't heard of synesthesia before, [wikipedia's article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) does a pretty good job of explaining it! lots of thanks to anyone who's actually read this up to here


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